Daniel Loeb

Daniel Loeb is the founder and CEO of Third Point, a New York-based hedge fund founded in 1995. While Third Point generically employs value-focused strategies, there has been significant media coverage related to its activism campaigns (including Ligand, Yahoo, Sotheby’s, Baxter, Sony and many more).

Daniel Loeb worked at Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm, from 1984 to 1987 and subsequently worked in corporate development at Island Records. He then worked as a risk arbitrage analyst at Lafer Equity Investors and was a senior vice president at Jefferies’ distressed debt department. From 1994 to 1995, he was in high-yield bond sales at Citigroup.

In 1995 when Daniel Loeb was 33 years old, he raised $3.4 million from five friends and family members and his own capital to found Third Point. As of 2014, Third Point had an estimated AUM of $17.5 billion. Third Point is named after a break at Malibu’s Surfrider Beach – Daniel Loeb has been a life-long surfer (Daniel Loeb also practices yoga and has completed in triathlons).

Daniel Loeb was born in 1961 in Santa Monica, California and his father was a partner at Irell & Manella and a general counsel of Williams-Sonoma. He graduated from Palisades Charter High School where he started investing in the stock market. After two years at UC Berkeley, Daniel Loeb transferred to Columbia University where he graduated with an economics degree. Daniel Loeb was a classmate of Barack Obama at Columbia University and although he has initially endorsed him for President, he has since publicly criticized him in his letters.

Daniel Loeb was #264 on Forbes 400 in 2016 with an estimated net worth of $2.6 billion. Daniel Loeb married a former yoga instructor who graduated from Brown University, Margaret Munzer Loeb in 2004. Together, they have three children. They live in a penthouse condo in the Upper West Side which they bought for $45 million in 2005 and also own a mansion in East Hampton which was purchased for $15.1 million in 2003. Daniel Loeb also purchased a 200-foot super yacht in 2013 from Sandy Weill for $50 to $52 million, according to people familiar with the sale. Daniel and Margaret Loeb run The Loeb Family – Third Point Foundation which Daniel Loeb founded in 2000 and as of 2011, had assets of $4.45 billion which makes it one of the largest private foundations. They support causes including education, LGBT freedom, justice reform, Alzheimer’s, and American heroes.